210 F00TE : GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



occasions, years prior to Dr. Fox's visit there, and made large and 

 valuable collections of neolithic implements, pot- 

 ^ Reasons for doubting tery> and ornamen ts of many kinds. That I 

 should, with my long and great experience in 

 palaeolithic archaeology in South India, dating from 1863 (when I 

 discovered the first palaeolithic remains in South India), have over- 

 looked important and extensive evidence of a palaeolithic colony at 

 that place, is utterly improbable. Had such evidence really existed, 

 I must have seen it, and should have been delighted with the find 

 which would have been unique, and to me of most special interest. 

 When Dr. Fox's letters appeared in the Madras Mail I wrote to that 

 paper, to call upon him to produce evidence in support of his claim 

 by describing the character, shape, and material of the implements he 

 had found, but these questions he never answered, and merely 

 reiterated his assertion as to their being palaeolithic, and resented 

 in rather unmeasured terms my having questioned the palaeolithic age 

 of his finds, so I can only believe that he mistook unfinished neolithic 

 implements for palaeolithic ones, because they were in a merely 

 chipped condition, the first stage of manufacture they all passed 

 through. He further claimed to have found palaeolithic pottery 

 with the rude stone implements, but this discovery I must also reject. 

 Of the hundreds of fragments of old pottery I handled on the top of 

 Kapgal, the site of his palaeolithic colony, not a single one was 

 hand-made ; all were wheel-made and kiln-baked ! Had I found 

 hand-made and sun-dried vessels, I should at once have decided 

 that I had hit upon some thing much older than an ordinary neolithic 

 settlement. In this case too Dr. Fox failed to adduce any real 

 evidence in support of his alleged find. He alleges that he found 

 sun-dried hand-made pottery, but in this assertion nobody supported 

 him ; certainly not my friend Mr. Hubert Knox, then Judge of 

 Bellary, to whom he presented his finds. Mr. Knox's opinion 

 in the matter I would have accepted at once. 



The controversy I had with Dr. Fox extended to another 

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